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Friday, February 26, 2010

Migration tool postponed until first part of next week

We've been working around the clock to get the migration tool launched this week as originally promised, and ran into two bugs which we are in the process of correcting. We are not happy about delaying this by a couple days, but launching it with the knowledge that a few bugs remained is definitely not the way to go into a weekend.

We'll have the video walkthrough and announcement post on this blog as soon as it's ready.

73 comments:

For every day you delay the availability of your migration tool you should pushback the cutoff for FTP users. This is pretty pathetic customer service. Sure, a free product, but FTP users are old time, highly loyal folks who are concerned about their identity. At least you have this blog and are answering questions. If plans were made to stop FTP publishing months in 2009, why wait till January 22nd to make the announcement?

I didn't renew my full hosting services at Doteasy because of this change, AND since I'm not technical, I asked them to handle the DNS thing which I don't understand. Your instructions for what I need to do at this end are not clear and you don't answer my requests for clarity. AND now, since they messed with the DNS, I'm losing data in my posts, all over the place. I'm VERYfrustrated, and scared that I'm losing not only my blog, but the whole Doteasy FTP I've always had for the url Beverlyajackson.com.

I don't understand the first thing about FTP services or any other technical details. But I have a well established blog with many readers and cannot get my latest posts to show up in "My Blog List". Is there any connection with your upcoming shut-down of FTP support on Blogger?

@bevjackson If you can share your URL and specifics about what problems you're having I'm happy to help resolve them.

@milkie: As soon as we got word about the pending architecture change, we immediately starting working on a transition plan (including the building of this tool). Building a tool that handles edge cases and the variety of hosting platforms our users support is a very complex endeavor, and had we waited to announce anything until the tool was done, we would have given users even less time to make a change and we felt that was absolutely not the right way to go.

@Hels Are you using FTP to publish your blog? If you're using the Blog list widget, that's using Layouts and only available on Blogger-hosted blogs. Which means your issues are unrelated, and should be handled in the help forum.

@David If we'd had more time, sure. We'd have loved to have had more time - but we asked for as much of an extension as we could, and meanwhile have had several team-members working on this near-full-time for the last two months. We already help people move to WordPress, with blog export and the Blog Converters project from the Data Liberation Format to ensure maximal compatibility with WordPress's import format.

And one clarification: WordPress does not support FTP'ing blog contents to remote servers. You can either host with WordPress (via wordpress.com) or install your own version of WordPress's code to your own server (requiring PHP and MySQL support on your webhost) which then publishes to the server dynamically (not via FTP).

2. I want to keep that url, so I created a Custom Domain, using www2.beverlyajackson.com as themissing links thing.

3. I asked Doteasy to do whatever needed doing at their end, and sent your emails (cutting off FTP) to them to use. One tech told me he had done it. Another tech told me I had to do it, and gave me instructions. So I did, and I was supposed to put in Doteasy's IP address. I don't KNOW their IP address.

4. At the same time, my billing period was due at Doteasy for hosting on March 1. I told them that my blog would no longer get that much traffic, so I wanted to downgrade to the free status. Their automatic response was that I would have to "republish" my blog, if I chose that free option. Then I got an email saying that I would STILL get traffic on Doteasy (from my Blogger blog) and so I needed to pay. It was not even March 1st (due date $) and my blog website disappeared. I have no idea how to republish. Now it says in my FTP down at the bottom that my blog has 17 failed entries, but it doesn't show them to me.

5. Meanwhile I get ANOTHER email from Doteasy saying that I should set up the missing files thing as "files.beverlyajackson.com" (when I had already set up "www2.beverlyajackson.com" in Blogger. I didn't change settings at either end. I just used www2 and maybe that is messing me up.

I have no images. I don't know if I can keep my own url without "blogspot" being added to it. I don't know how to untangle this mess. I don't know WHAT the migration program is for, since the custom domain does not address any migration process. Do I even need it?

ALL of my images all over the internet have disappeared, and I am one unhappy camper. Things were working just great the way they were.

@beverly jackson: So that we're clear, is it your goal to have your blog remain at www.beverlyjackson.com? In that case, you should:

1: update blogger settings ("Settings | Publishing | Switch to custom domain") and type in that URL2: update the DNS for www.beverlyjackson.com (through your domain registrar) to point the CNAME for www to "ghs.google.com."3: create a CNAME through your domain registrar for www2 or files (whichever you prefer) which points to doteasy's IP address4: configure Blogger's missing files host to use the CNAME you set up (either www2.beverlyjackson.com or files.beverlyjackson.com).

It looks like you've already done 1, 2 and 4. So my guess at this point is that the IP address you're pointing www2 isn't doteasy's IP address, so it's most likely a simple update to ensure that the CNAME for the backup domain (www2) is pointed to the right place. Sounds like doteasy should be able to help you get that final step taken care of.

I'm looking at testing this thing on a spare domain I have on a free account. I want to have the blog setup at blog.mydomain.com and have www.mydomain.com as a standard website that will link to the blog.

I've done the CNAME thing (pointing blog subdomain to ghs.......), but what on earth is the ANAME bit of the google help pages on about? I need to test all of this before I do it on two sites that use ftp blogging as an integral part of the site....although I can do basic HTML etc. I getting lost in this DNS stuff......

I think the setting under Publishing for either Blog URL or FTP path is wrong.

Blog URL is:http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger

put that in the URL window and instead of turning into http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger/blog.htmit turns intohttp://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/MUHLBERGER/muhlberg.htm (a real page, too).

@steve: Re: export problems: thanks, reported that to support and engineering and will find out what's up. Appreciate sharing the specific URL.

Regarding the problem with your publishing path, it sounds like you've misconfigured your FTP publishing path. You'll need to get that from your IT department. It's usually something like "public_html/directory/subdirectory".

Rick, you are telling to create a CNAME. Doteasy is telling me to create an ANAME.

My blog has disappeared on Donteasy and they are telling me I need to republish it. When I look up how to do that, it says go to the "Posting" tab and choose Status. There IS NO Status choice on my Posting tab.

@bevjackson: A Cname is a subdomain. An A record is an address for a given domain. More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types.

You can host your blog at any domain/subdomain. The reason I asked the question was to make sure I understood what you wanted. You *can* keep your current address (www.beverlyajackson.com), you just need to properly set up the CNAME for your missing files host domain, which is something that doteasy needs to enable you to do.

@bevjackson If you've already migrated your blog to a custom domain (you have) then you won't see a status tab (because that's only available for FTP blogs). You don't need to republish anything from your blog - the blog is now hosted by Blogger. What you *do* need to do is get the backup domain working properly at doteasy so that the files that *are* hosted by them (the images) are referenceable at the url www2.beverlyajackson.com.

@Rick Klau. Thanks for the clarification. It's probably worth noting that I suspect most of the people that still use FTP publishing do so because of it's simplicity in setup. I, and I'm sure others, know very little about DNS servers,ANAME, CNAME etc. or know the difference between naked domains, sub-domains etc.. without at least a few good examples. I only managed to find one source that mentioned ANAME wasn't necessary for subdomain registrations. Don't get me wrong, if only a CNAME change is needed, that's great (although it's taken me a few weeks to actually find the option to change it on my free hosting....they won't give support at all on the free hosting), but this really wasn't obvious from the support material.

Give more detailed examples, and much of these queries will go away (now I'm just wrestling with the 'do I need a full stop at the end of ghs.google.com or not.....)

Rick, it looks like I've lost my blog. The idiot at Doteasy who wrote the following message is telling me to REDO/re-download every jpg and reconfigure every link on Blogger. I have YEARS of work on this blog. No way.

Is there anyway I can republish, now that I've done the custom domain option? I'm really beside myself with grief.

syTo: Beverly A. Jackson 03:09 PM (8 mins)Hello Beverly,

I see you had created the www2 subdomain successfully, so now, you need to upload your image files into the ww2 subdomain FTP folder, and then configure your Blogger blog to point to these images.

Please upload the image files missing from your blog as per these instructions.

For example, one of the missing images is:http://www.beverlyajackson.com/Bev/MaryTrip.jpg

You will then need to create a "Bev" folder in your FTP, and then upload a file called "MaryTrip.jpg" into that folder. In addition, you will need to re-configure the image URL at Blogger so it uses:http://www2.beverlyajackson.com/Bev/MaryTrip.jpg

This will make the image show up on your blog.

Please do this for your missing images, and let us know if you have any further problems.

Regards,

AnsonDoteasy Customer Service"Join the hosting revolution!"

Consolidated, centralized help 24/7. Doteasy Support Centre. Get hosting help now.http://www.doteasy.com/Support

can anyone tell me if there is a benfeit to having it on a sub domain (www.blog.beinlovedesigns.com) vs. blogspot address? I did ftp so my website would get traffic. I run asp so I can't use wordpress. Now I don't know what option to choose for the migration. Please help.

@becjackson: Unfortunately we never had the images/files, those were always on your FTP host. Even if we could revert you to an FTP blog, all that would do is republish the blog posts, not the images or other files.

I would suggest following up with doteasy, and escalating if necessary. They should have (at least I would hope they have) backups from some point in the recent past, so they should be able to recreate the files that were hosted in your account. I wish I could do something to help, but those were files that were uploaded directly to doteasy's servers, we never had them and merely uploaded them to doteasy. If they have backups, then restoring those backups should be a straightforward process and will bring you back to where you were.

ok, setup my CNAMEs to point blog.brucewiggins.co.uk and www.blog.brucewiggins.co.uk to ghs.google.com, but nothing is working (time till stable is now down at 0 so DNS changes should be done....) any idea what's gone wrong?

This is the first I've heard about this! What the heck am I meant to be doing? I use blogger because I can host it on my OWN site and give it my OWN layout. On your FAQ you say you hint that you're going to do away with custom layouts. So why should I stay with you? I am really pissed about this cos I have two blogs hosted with you, both with their own layouts, both inbedded in my site. If I wanted a crummy bog-standard template-layout blog I'd use Wordpress or LJ! Your Reasons For Doing This don't make any kind of sense to me. I am just totally confused.

@Ys: Terminology check: "custom templates" = specific term referring to the way in which FTP blogs (and a handful of older Blogger-hosted blogs) present their content. "Layouts" = more modern templating system on Blogger. We are not doing away with support of custom-built templates, see here for more on that.

Many thanks. I've got a feeling it's a problem my end. I had a look at the CNAME record for blog.brucewiggins.co.uk here: http://www.hscripts.com/tools/HDNT/dns-record.php and it doesn't mention ghs.google.com. I am correct in saying that blog.brucewiggins.co.uk should really go to ghs.google.com.brucewiggins.co.uk ? That's what my DNS control panel reckons is happening......

I was asking you earlier about my continuing problems with exporting an FTP blog in preparation for the discontinuation. One thing that came up was that on the settings| publishing page my FTP publishing pathis blank. I think I know what that path is, but before I start monkeying around with it, I want to know about this warning on the same page under blog filename:

"Warning: If this file already exists on your server in the path entered above, it will be OVERWRITTEN. Be sure to back it up."

What will happen if I change the path and republish? Or should I wait until your techs tell me what's wrong with my export function?

I have had a blog since 2001 and while that doesn't make it more important than anybody else's here I would prefer to keep my domain the same. Or rather, my subdomain.

The blog address is dean.katsiris.com and I worry that I will not be able to use blogger in association with a subdomain. At least I haven't seen anything addressing this.

I really don't understand how FTP is a resource hog. A onetime upload of files rather than continual demands for files hosted on blogger. Is this just a control issue? Or something to do with implementing add-ons and new features?

Wow! This is really not the correct way to end a product lifecycle, a VERY minimal notice that impacts a lot of users. I currently have almost 20 FTP blogs working for my clients and now I have to wait until your migrational tool works and then have HOW MUCH time to change ALL my customer blogs?

While you work on your migrational tool I'll work on customizing new WP templates...

Anyone else out there have a GREAT Blog replacement suggestion, I hate WP but it looks like the best solution....

I was told by Rick in another thread that if Google wants to delete your site as a "spam blog" or for any other reason, they can't do it if you're on FTP publishing, but they can put an interstital (warning page) or delete your blog more easily if the blog is on Google servers.

@Chad: Final QA is happening right now, we've tested in both our development and staging environments, and will be doing the final sanity testing in our production environment shortly. That should go smoothly, and we will then flip the bit to have it live for everyone. Either later this evening or first thing tomorrow morning. You'll see an alert in your dashboard as soon as it's live.

I'm trying to be philosophical, here. I used Blogger from 2005 until now, I've had over 300K podcast DLs from my blog, blah blah... so I've had some good service from Blogger... but I'm REALLY starting to regret not having bit the bullet and developed my own blog system back in 2005. As it was, I had to create my own database and search system because the Blogger link architecture is so wack.

I just had a great idea (probably not the first) -- a guy who made a Blogger-to-WordPress framework so you could transparently move from satic blog pages generated by Blogger into the WP database pages could make a small fortune. (Well, probably pretty small. Heh. Still.)

I have to say, this is just one more dimming of Google's once bright star...

I hope they don't decide to "improve" the search engine... I ain't ready to switch to Bing. LOL

I have been a supporter of Blogger.com since 2003, and a supporter of the platform in the face of Wordpress and others. The FTP users are Blogger's core 'alpha' users ... and this sequence of events is not good enough.

The bungled transfer, and now delays to the tool mean defection for me ... what happens when the day comes that Google decides Blogger is just too much of a drain on its servers?

It's been a great, great 7 years - thankyou. But it's with regret that this weekend I move to Wordpress.

Here are a few items of importance that I would appreciate to not be overlooked.

I know the following might sound Greek to some folks, but I think it is important to talk about it. Basically there is/was more than one way to publish files using Blogger FTP publishing.

Some of the blogs that have been published via FTP publishing with Blogger are set up as .php or even .asp files instead of .html or .htm file naming conventions. In fact, most of my blogs have been published as the primary index.php file for the home page or even using an index.php file for a sub directory blog off the main url instead of the index.html which is/was the Blogger ftp default setting. Also note that the archive files are set up from an archive.php file instead of archive.html (also the Blogger default archive file ftp setting).

So, what needs to happen with these files is that they need to be redirected to the appropriate file(s) at either the Blogspot hosted area or the new Custom Domain/Subdomain Name, which only has the .html file names.

Also note, that while I sincerely applaud Nick Carter from posttwo.com for coming up with a pretty cool solution of not having to switch to a different custom domain name, I don't believe Nick has taken into account for all the different naming conventions of the old hosted FTP accounts and making the switch to either the Blogger domain name or the new Custom domain name. Note that when the blog is switched to the Blogspot.com or the new custom domain name, the files are now html instead of .php files. Therefore, when the script is executed, the files will have a .html ending instead of the old .php ending. This will cause the links to break from the old to the new.

In addition, I am a bit puzzled about some of the other instructions on the downloadable file from posttwo.com. I have additional questions that I need answered.

Nick, can you post some FAQs? Also Nick, could you provide a blog posting yourself to get some additional, in-depth feedback going? I know that someone said they had used your script, but I am still a bit leery of using it without some addition insights.

@ Rick: if you're doing away with FTP then it doesn't take a genius to work out that more of your features will be dropped. You were the ONLY site that let me imbed my blog into my own template. You no longer do that. I hope the Google buy-out was worth it for you guys cos you sure have shafted a lot of your users because of it.

As many have said before on this thread: goodbye Blogger. I've been with you for ten years but there's no point staying when you're no longer doing what I need. I'm not a novice so I'll just post my blog myself on my own site. It'll take a bit more work to keep the archives but it's the easiest solution for me cos I'm old-school and use HTML and fear php ;)

I used the posttwo script, and it worked ... sort of. Since I had to remove all original files from my root folder before installing the index.php file, the new blog did not display any of my uploaded images. Once I copied the Uploaded Images directory back into the root directory, everything worked fine, but this posttwo fix will not allow me to get to WordPress, which is my ultimate goal.

OK, I would request more time. Once instructions are posted, give us the time to 'migrate'. The blogs are essential to our business - and I don't mind paying for something this important. Perhaps you should have given me, and us, the option of an annual fee?

@Rick -- I am the guy still having exporting problems. However, my IT people tell me that the FTP publishing path is accurate. One problem dissolves. I would appreciate hearing something about the exporting problems. Thanks.

Note: Comments are closed on this post. Please direct general questions to the FAQ page, and specific problems with the migration tool to the issue tracker. More details about support for the FTP migration are here.